Asher: Meaning of Baby Name Asher

About the Name Asher

Asher descends from the Hebrew Asher, meaning "happy," "fortunate," or "blessed." The biblical Asher is the eighth son of the patriarch Jacob, born to Zilpah, Leah's handmaid; his mother named him with the words "Happy am I!" (Genesis 30:13). Asher became the namesake of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, traditionally settled in the agricultural plains of western Galilee, where the tribe's territory included olive groves and fertile lands consistent with Jacob's blessing of "his food shall be rich."

The name was used sparingly in pre-modern English-language naming, with occasional Puritan-era appearances. Notable bearers across history are limited but include American landscape painter Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886), one of the founders of the Hudson River School and creator of the iconic painting Kindred Spirits; Israeli-American philosopher Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'am); and contemporary actor Asher Angel.

Asher's modern American surge is a 21st-century phenomenon, part of the broader return to short Old Testament boys' names alongside Levi, Eli, and Ezra. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the top 30 by 2020. The appeal is its compact warmth — two syllables, soft consonants, religiously anchored without being heavy, the literal meaning "happy" giving the name an inherent positive register. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Ash and the rare Ace appear; the related but distinct Ashton is sometimes treated as an extension. There are no significant international variants since the name has remained essentially Hebrew/English; the German and Yiddish Osher appears occasionally in religious-Jewish contexts.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Asher

1,531

Hebrew baby names in our dictionary

695

Hebrew male names

488

5-letter A-names in our dictionary

1,087

A-male names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

107,607

total US births named Asher (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

➖ Steady: Asher edged up 4 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#32 in 2020 → #28 in 2025).

Annual US births named Asher by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2022 with 8,410 boys named Asher (boy rank #20 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #28 for boys (7,456 US births). That's 8 places below its 2022 peak.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Asher Most Popular?

Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Asher the strongest states are North Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	North Dakota	#10	354
2	Arkansas	#12	952
3	Oklahoma	#14	1,187
4	South Dakota	#16	307
5	West Virginia	#17	612
6	Wyoming	#17	147
7	Idaho	#17	552
8	Montana	#20	275
9	Alabama	#21	1,351
10	Georgia	#21	2,696

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Rhode Island	#86	130
2	California	#80	5,053
3	Connecticut	#77	451
4	Massachusetts	#77	825
5	New Jersey	#68	1,263
6	District of Columbia	#64	152
7	New Hampshire	#62	210
8	Texas	#59	5,688
9	Illinois	#59	1,842
10	Delaware	#57	168

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Asher in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Ash	Ash Tree.	Male	English
Ashur	Swahili Name For A Child Born During The Muslim Month Of Ashur.	Male	African

Looking for names like Asher?

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Compare Asher to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Asher against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Asher vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Asher vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Asher vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Asher vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Asher vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Asher vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Asher vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Asher vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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